280
PARTISAN REVIEW
where Joyce had found it in the feminine creative principle. Mr. Shaw's
affirmation, however, is not philosophical but Hollywood-practical. The
child must be born because, in 1943, he will become engaged to the girl
next door and wear the uniform of the United Nations. At an earlier point
in the play, when the boy has been carrying on with a married woman,
the answer has been decidedly No. The tragic acceptance of life is not
for Mr. Shaw; he is humanity's fair-weather friend.
Needless to say, the war is not taken seriously by this author. The
uniform is the costume of virtue, and that is all. In
Tomorrow The
World,
by James Gow and Arnauld d'Usseau, at the Ethel Barrymore
Theatre, the problems of fascism and democracy are, at any rate, opened
for discussion in an atmosphere reminiscent of the Chicago Round Table.
This is the play about the Nazi child, a paratrooper of the spirit, who
steps from a plane into the home of a middle-western American college
professor, bringing terror and evil and darkness with him. Before he
is cured by the straightforwardess of a child and the discreet sympathy
of a progressive school teacher, a picture has been slashed to pieces, a
child has been hit on the head with a bronze ornament, an engagement
has been broken, a spy discovered, and the professor has nearly com–
mitted a murder. This play is so wholeheartedly within the conventions
of the American theatre that it exudes a certain stuffy yet innocent charm.
We know this professor so well, we have seen him on the stage so many
times that he has become our legendary culture-hero, and his house, with
its flowered chintzes, its wall of books, its comfortable sofa, its comical
maid, has become our American Valhalla, whether we like it or not.
And we feel it as a kind of national outrage that this sacred home, this
shrine of the
Nation
and the
New Republic,
should be violated by a
goosestepping child. The play, then, gives a limited satisfaction; its
aim is to entertain and instruct, and
it
does so with moderate success.
The symbolism is obvious but well maintained. The fifth column which
throws off its disguises at the appearance of Emil exists in the heart of
the professor and his old-maid sister as well as in the person of a
Bundist janitor named Muller, who is trying to get the key to the pro–
fessor's laboratory where experiments of military importance are being
carried on. What the audience carries home is the conviction that
fascism is a disease which can be cured by patience, tolerance, intelligence,
and by casting out the mote in one's own eye. This view is at least
humane, and the spectator, here fully participating, feels his own human–
ity swell with a kind of pleasant ache in his bosom. Unfortunately, the
catharsis, though real enough, is incomplete. The problem has been
solved in a vacuum, in the pure ether· of melodrama and progressive
education, or, rather,
a
problem has been solved, but it
is
not precisely
the problem we thought we were wrestling with. The child is not normal;
he has had a traumatic experience, and his case is therefore not typical.
In the same way, the question of anti-Semitism, which appears to have
been mastered by the characters, turns out upon examination never to
have been properly raised. The professor's Jewish fiancee, who is ac–
cepted by everyone on the stage, including, in the end, the Nazi
child,
is a young lady named Miss Richards; she is played by Shirley Booth,
a blond actress whose last role was My Sister Eileen.
MARY McCARTHY
